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Thursday, February 17, 2011

Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon and Dean Hale

8 out of 10: Fun, fun, fun! Rapunzel's Revenge is a grapic novel retelling Rapunzel's story. Her story is also intertwined with a certain Jack who is trying to make up for a certain bean stalk.

I may have a more positive approach to some on graphic novels. I don't agree with the idea that they are not real books, or that they are a "bad habit" for kids to get into (yes, I've heard that). I never really thought about graphic novels until the summer of 2007, when my professor included graphic novels as a literary form in our Critical Intro to Literary Forms class. He was a grad student who cancelled class for a week to go to Comic-con, and so obviously he would include graphic novels. I thought it was silly at first, but I was wrong. It was in that class I learned the importance of graphic novels as an emerging literary form. I believe that graphic novels can be one of the most powerful tools for a teacher or parent to turn a non-reader into a reader. In that class, we read Maus by Art Spiegelman, and that has to be my favorite graphic novel, but it is definitely more appropriate for adults.

Rapunzel's Revenge, however is a graphic novel I would recommend to both boys and girls. I loved the illustrations, done by Nathan Hale. I loved the story. I'm pretty much obsessed with any book with a strong female character, so of course Rapunzel is my favorite part of the story. She's so brave. Her unbelief at all of her world's injustices is inspiring. She doesn't just do the bare minimum to save her mother, she goes all out to save as many people as she can. Jack is fun, too, and the reason why boys will like this book too. I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and I'm excited to read the sequel, Calamity Jack.